Justo Algaba

Justo Algaba has been tailoring trajes de luces - the elaborately embroidered suits worn by bullfighters - since 1978, out of two Madrid workshops, one near Puerta del Sol and a second in Las Rozas. The client list runs through some of the bullring's most recognized names, including Curro Romero, Juan José Padilla and Morante de la Puebla, work that has built the house's reputation within the taurine world specifically rather than fashion generally. That specialism has carried outward into adjacent costume work: Algaba has made ecclesiastical vestments, opera wardrobe and formal wedding wear, dressed the tenor Plácido Domingo, and produced costumes for film and stage productions including Pedro Almodóvar's Hable con ella, with pieces from the workshop having appeared in productions as far afield as London and Sydney. The Madrid workshop also houses a private museum of roughly 100 historic and avant-garde trajes de luces, letting visitors see the embroidery and construction up close rather than only on a matador in the ring. Between the two sastrerías, the museum, and the sideline into opera and film costume, Justo Algaba reads less as a single tailor shop than as a working archive of a very specific Spanish craft, still taking commissions from the same world it started in.